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Wind energy faces daunting challenges
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jul 28, 2008 10:25am |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Friday, July 25, 2008 04:25:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Dave Montgomery | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Led by billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, pioneers in the emerging wind-power industry are touting their product as The Next Big Thing as they chart a course to produce at least 20 percent of the nation's electricity in just over two decades.
But reaching that goal won't be easy. The most daunting challenge centers on the fundamental question of how to get the product to customers. That will require building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry electricity from turbines clustered on wind-swept prairies in America's heartland to distant cities and towns.
Industry leaders are calling for a national commitment to wind power on the same scale as the Eisenhower administration's commitment to constructing the Interstate Highway System. Erecting a transmission grid for wind-generated electricity, they say, would require up to 20,000 miles of new lines at a minimum cost of $60 billion — and possibly much more.
The undertaking faces "all kinds of problems," from right-of-way issues to resistance by "not-in-my-backyard" groups opposed to the aesthetic intrusion of giant wind turbines, says Steven P. Lindenberg, with the office of wind and hydropower technologies in the Department of Energy.
"It's huge," Mike Sloan, president of Austin, Texas-based Vitrus Energy, says in describing the challenge. "If you don't have a transmission system to get it there, it becomes useless." |
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